First off I'd like to thank in advance any help I'm hoping to receive from this thread. It never ceases to amaze me how friendly and supportive the open-source community is.

That being said, shall we get to the point? I purchased a new system, dell pre-packaged. This isn't my first choice, but I got an amazing deal on the hardware in the desktop (I went through my account manager from work so I knew exactly the components going into the rig), and I couldn't pass up a pre-built system that cost less than what I could have built myself. Specs are as follows:

After looking at the setup, I like it all. Although I seem to be the ying to the majority of user's yang. I use intel processors while most on the boards here use AMD, but I use ATI cards while nVidia seems to be the favored in this ring. More about below...

I'd want to setup a hybrid with it. I started this process yesterday and had some issues. **At this point, after struggling on some sort of comprehensive format with which to present my questions, I figure it's just easier to explain my step-to-step from yesterday, and present the questions in that timeline as they were presented to me.** So here we go.

At this point I'm dealing with analog sound until I get a sound card in this puppy. **Q#1: Any recommendations for a 5.1-7.1 sound card that works?? **

I start this process knowing full well that I may have issues with that ATI card. I also assume that I may have to change the setup many times if not install again where I'm building my media center part by part.

I install the OS, and everything works fine until I get to the first GUI.

As I'm choosing my DVI out, and OpenGL w/alpha blending I notice that the OS seems to be running clunky, slow and choppy. I'm even getting lag on my cursor.

Sarah's walkthrough starts and I don't see video, and the OS is choppy, unresponsive, and is behaving buggy. I had seen the "equipment used in the video" demo and figured that if his on-board nVidia 6150 worked, that if my ATI card worked at all, being a more powerful gpu, it would work great. At this point I'm doubting my figures. **Q#2: Does anyone actually have an idea of what graphics model minimum runs everything smoothly with alpha blending/etc?

The walkthrough finished, and the OS starts...painfully slow and unworkable. I can't get any sort of response from it. I know how to get back to the video setup to change it, but it is SO slow that it proves to be quicker just to reinstall the whole thing. I'm also doubting my hard drive setup (when dell says they are sending you a raid, it's a pain to take apart), so I triple check my BIOS to make sure I disabled the raid correctly.

I reinstall. This time I choose OpenGL w/o alpha blending. Everything runs smoother. Still far from great, but manageable. I figured at this point that my ATI card is either A) just behaving badly, or B) not registering at all and I'll need to manually install it.

It actually starts running. Mind you no media is displayed because I have none on these hard drives yet. (I have a 1TB external nearly filled with media, much of which will be moved to my lmce box.)

As soon as I try to access any media, or advanced features, it switches to a command line asking for a logon ID **Q#3: ...wtf? All I was trying to see was the menu, I know I don't have media installed...and even moreso that there is no password on my hard drives. External isn't plugged in at this point. Anyone recognize what I'm talking about?**

That's about where I left it yesterday. I figure the ATI card is just a small waste of power right now, but I have a friend who's going to let me borrow his extra nVidia 8600GT 512mb to see if that does the trick. I had originally planned on upgrading my main desktops video card in the next few months and moving one of the ATI 1950xtx's in there now over to this machine, but if it's not going to take any ATI card I'll just have to purchase a nVidia. Q#4: Does Lmce automatically find/mount other hard drives, or would I have to do that manually? I never got that far.

Wow. I just realized I posted this in the wrong thread. I meant to put it in "Installation issues" or "Users"; whichever is more appropriate. If any friendly moderator out there could move this thread, I'd greatly appreciate it....